A Bundle of Love

February 4, 2018

This ritual is for the lover and the romantic. It was created as a way to celebrate and express love and to make a wish for your love life but it could also be used to call a relationship into your life. Scroll down for the printable step-by-step instructions.

My husband and I are facing a stressful situation. Stress can do to relationships what plaque can do to teeth but instead of stress wreaking havoc on our relationship, I want us to face our problems as a team – which we’re actually pretty good at. I also want us to trust that we’re not moving through this alone and there are unseen forces of Love conspiring in our favor. And I want us to remember to still have fun and play and laugh – which we’re not always good at in times of stress.

To help focus my thoughts and energy in the right direction, I created this art ritual for celebrating, expressing and calling in Love. I think this ritual is perfect if, like me, you’re in a relationship and would like to contemplate how you want your relationship to look like in the future. It’s also a great ritual if you want to take a quiet moment to reflect on the areas in your relationship that could use a little TLC or you simply want to express gratitude for the wonderful relationship you have. And finally, I think this ritual could easily be adapted for anyone who isn’t in a relationship but would love to call one into their lives.

Before sharing it with you, I want to remind you that when engaging in one of my art rituals, there are a few steps I perform before I sit down to do the writing, painting or creating part of my ritual. They include gathering my materials, clearing my mind and my physical space, inviting or calling in my spiritual helpers and setting boundaries or placing a circle of protection and blessing my tools and material. I outline these steps in more detail in my “Beginner’s Guide to Preparing for Art Rituals” which I send, along with other helpful goodies, when you subscribe to my Moon Sisters Art and Ritual Magazine. If you would like the guide delivered to your inbox, you can subscribe to the magazine on my home page.

The first step in this art ritual is to gather the materials. This is a very flexible art ritual. You can make tons of adjustments and use whatever you have on hand. This is what I used:

red candle

sticks (I used 6)

red string

embroidery thread

small fabric bag

small piece of fabric (if you want to sew heart to your fabric bag)

paper or decorative paper (for writing on then scrolling up)

sealing wax (you can use string or ribbon if you don’t have sealing wax)

As I performed the opening steps of my ritual, I lit a red candle. Red feels powerful and passionate to me and represents romantic love.

To help set the mood, I also played love songs. Here’s a list of songs to get you started. It’s a list that my husband, Luis, shared with me. He said these songs make him think of me. (God, how I love that man.)

“Only You” by The Platters

“Something in the Way She Moves” by James Taylor

“You’re My Best Friend” by Don Williams

“You Make Me Feel So Young” and “The Way You Look Tonight” by Frank Sinatra

“I’ll Be Your Lover Too” by Van Morrison

“You Make Loving Fun” by Fleetwood Mac

“Never Ending Song of Love” by Delaney and Bonnie and Friends

I cut small strips of paper to write my wishes on. I had six sticks so I cut out six small strips.

After writing a wish on each strip of paper, I used red string to bind each wish to a stick. I then used brown string to bind all the sticks together.

Next, I thought about our love story and what kind of changes I wanted to see in our relationship. On decorative paper, I wrote down, in as much detail as possible, my thoughts, prayer and vision. This step had me crying big wet salty tears. I felt grateful for our love story and everything we have survived and enjoyed together. I let my tears of gratitude roll off my cheeks and bless my words.

If you are doing this ritual as a way to call a relationship into your life, imagine the love story the two of you will create together and write that love story down in as much detail as possible.

When I was done writing and crying, I rolled the paper up in a scroll and sealed it with sealing wax. I chose to seal my private thoughts and vision with sealing wax because my words weren’t intended for anyone but God and Divine Mother. If you don’t have sealing wax, you can easily use ribbon or string to tie your scroll closed.

To add a little charm, I used a piece of rafia to wrap a couple cinnamon sticks and a feather to my scroll. For this step, you can use whatever objects you feel suit what you wrote about in your letter. When I was performing this ritual, I felt pulled to include lots of cinnamon. I used the cinnamon sticks here but also used Cinnamon essential oil later in my prayer bag. I was just going with my intuition so I didn’t really know why Cinnamon was drawing me so much until I read about one of the emotional properties of Cinnamon having to do with safety and security.

The stress my husband and I are facing has to do with our financial safety and security which might explain why I can’t seem to get enough of the Cinnamon scent lately. What I want is to feel safe. I think I need our situation to be different but safety is a feeling – not just a physical reality. I can feel safe in precarious situations because how I feel doesn’t need to be fully determined by my external environment. When I breathe in Cinnamon, I feel like a tree with roots digging deep into warm dirt and this helps my heart feel relaxed and safe so my art ritual was working even before I had completed it.

Next, I created a prayer bag. I took an old fabric bag and cut a small heart out of scrap fabric and sewed the heart onto my fabric bag with embroidery thread.

As I spoke my prayers to God and Divine Mother, I filled the prayer bag with plant medicine and holy water. I included mint, Myrrh, Frankincense, Cinnamon, Lavender and Roses.

My final addition to the Love Bundle was to include three wood rounds. I wanted to play with the idea of carving our names in a tree so I came up with “d” <3 “l” or in other words, Dana loves Luis. Yes, I’m a cheesy romantic.

The final step was to hang the scroll, wood rounds and prayer bag to the sticks I bundled together. I used rafia string for this. Then I needed something to hang my bundle. I tied a slip knot with burlap ribbon and wrapped the ends of the slip knot around the bundle of sticks. The burlap ribbon covered up all the string and rafia pieces and finished everything off in a lovely way.

Here’s the step-by-step instructions of this ritual in a format you can print for your convenience. If you do perform this ritual publicly or share photos of the ritual, please respect the work of this artist and creator by providing a link back to this original post. Also, if you end up performing this ritual, I’d love to see what you completed. You can even post the finished piece on Instagram or Facebook with the hashtag #danasartrituals

Cut small strips of paper to write your wishes on. Cut enough for one strip of paper per stick.

Use red string to bind each wish to a stick. When each stick has a wish bound to it, bind all the sticks together.

On decorative paper, write down, in as much detail as possible, your thoughts, prayer and vision for your relationship. If you are doing this ritual as a way to call a relationship into your life, imagine the love story the two of you will create together and write that love story down in as much detail as possible.

Roll the paper up in a scroll and seal it with sealing wax. If you don’t have sealing wax, you can easily use ribbon or string to tie your scroll closed.

Wrap a couple cinnamon sticks, a feather or other meaningful objects to the scroll.

Create a prayer bag and sew a heart or other meaningful symbol to it.

Fill the prayer bag with plant medicine, essential oils and holy water or whatever else is meaningful to you.

If including three wood rounds, write or draw on them now.

With rafia or string hang the prayer bag, wood rounds and scroll to the sticks you bundled together.

Tie a slip knot with burlap ribbon and wrap the ends of the slip knot around the bundle of sticks to create a hook to hang the bundle from.

End with a prayer of gratitude.

Notes

Thank you for honoring my work and creativity. The photos of this craft and/or ritual and content above are copyright protected. Please do not use the photos without prior written permission or without a link back to this blog post. If you wish to share this art based ritual, please provide a link back to this post on my blog. And if you like this art based ritual but want to make changes to it, please do so in your own words and link this post for credit. Thank you!

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I'm an artist and professional intuitive. I lead women's circles and offer services, art and beautiful, hand drawn worksheets to help you manage your highly sensitive nature so you can be the parent, healer and business owner you want to be while living with more magic and intention.